Date Me Like You Mean It

I throw myself onto him before he can finish, and we tumble back out into the hallway. He groans under my weight as I pin him down, kissing him anywhere I can manage: his hair, his forehead, his cheeks, his mouth.

“Is that a yes?”

“What kind of proposal was that?!” I tease, sitting back to get a good look at him. “Where was the romance?!”

“I wasn’t finished,” he insists, peering up at me from the ground. He’s wearing a cocky half-smile. A lock of dark hair hangs low over his forehead. “You’re the woman of my dreams, the absolute best lover I’ve ever had—”

I shove him on the shoulder, and he winces playfully.

“That’s your proposal?! Talking about my skills in the bedroom!? We’re going to have to tell people about this!”

“Okay, so I shouldn’t go into detail about that little thing we did Saturday night—”

I try to stand up then, to inform him that I’ve had enough of his quips, but he reaches out to grab my hands and hold me down on top of him.

“Maddie.”

His tone has shifted. He’s not kidding anymore. His green eyes implore me to take him seriously, to say yes and put him out of his misery. His hands squeeze mine.

“I love you,” he says, so sincere and earnest that I have to blink through the sudden onslaught of emotion. “Marry me,” he continues, after swallowing past a lump in his throat. “Be my wife. Make me the happiest man for as long as we both shall live.”

I start to nod slowly, but then momentum builds and my head is bobbing up and down wildly as tears spill down my cheeks.

“Yes?” he asks, starting to sit up. “Yes?!”

I’m grinning from ear to ear, practically splitting my cheeks in two.

He lets go of my hands so he can wrap his arms around my waist and hoist us both up and off the ground. We crash back into the condo. I’m vaguely aware of Lucy in the background of the kitchen, saying something, but my every cell is focused on Aiden. I kiss him senseless, trying to show him rather than tell him how much I want to marry him. Desperately. Embarrassingly. If I could say yes a thousand times, I would.

“Don’t mind me! I’ll just keep eating my cereal!” Lucy shouts as we head toward my room. “No, that’s fine. Just leave the front door swinging wide open! I’ll take care of it, sure. Oh, and I guess I’ll be getting Aiden’s suitcase he left out here as well? What am I, the bellhop?”

“Thanks Luce!” I say, just before Aiden carries me past the threshold of my bedroom and kicks the door closed behind us.

I’m pawing at his clothes, trying to magically make them disappear, when I realize it’s a workday. A Monday, no less.

“Aiden, I have to be at the office soon!”

“You’ll be on time. I promise,” he says, sounding impatient.

I have no idea how he can promise that as he’s currently slipping his hand up into my pajama shirt.

What ensues after that is the fastest, most injury-inducing bout of morning sex I’ve ever had. We don’t make it onto the bed. We barely make it past the door. It’s fast and reckless and I’m sweating and breathing hard by the end of it. I have a bruise on my ass and a sore shoulder from lord knows what.

I glance up at Aiden: his cheeks are flushed, and his eyes carry that I-just-had-the-best-sex-of-my-life glow to them.

“That was…”

Aiden grins and finishes my thought for me. “Glorious. Now get in the shower. After, I’ll walk you to work.”

I turn on the water and then step inside. With my head tilted back under the stream, I let this newfound reality sink beneath the layers of shock. Aiden came back to Texas for me. He quit his job and proposed. It doesn’t feel possible.

Then I peer around the shower curtain to see him walk into the bathroom and head straight for me. He wants into the shower too, and he doesn’t ask before he steps in and shifts us so we both get wet.

I’m staring at him, slack-jawed, when he finally realizes it and looks over.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head.

Then I reach out and poke him in the chest with my finger. He’s real.

His brows quirk with confusion. “What’s up? Why are you being weird?”

“I just…can’t quite wrap my head around how this is possible.”

“Us together in the shower?”

“No—you being back in Texas. You asking me to marry you.”

He smiles and shrugs, like to him, it’s just another Monday morning.

Then I watch as he holds out his right hand and slowly unfurls a thin gold antique ring.

“What’s that?”

“A ring I got last night from a nice woman sitting beside me on the plane. I told her my plans, about me quitting my job and flying back to Texas. I told her I wanted to marry you, and she asked me if I had a ring to give you.”